Lovely Warren: The only LEGITIMATE Democratic candidate for mayor of Rochester.

Tomorrow, November 5, is Rochester’s General Election.

There are a host of offices up for grabs.

The Democratic Primary Election has, for all intents and purposes, and for better or worse, pretty much predetermined that the incumbent candidates on Rochester’s “rubber stamp” City Council will be returned to office.

Ditto the incompetent and inept incumbents on Rochester’s School Board.

The only fortunate by-product of this is that we won’t have to see most of them for another four years, when they will come crawling out of the woodwork to seek re-election based on their ever increasing roster of dubious accomplishments. The stuff of which prize-winning fiction is made.

Of course, there are other candidates for those same offices, running under different parties, notably the Green Party candidates. Or you can write-in the candidates of your choice.

The most interesting race, however, is for that of mayor of Rochester. People have been looking forward to it since 2011, when the high farce of the “Special Election” took place.

Despite the mad antics of some disgruntled rogue Democrats employed by City Hall and their domestic, economic and political by-blows, acting as operatives for Steve Corryn’s Independence Party, there are only two, count ‘em, two LEGITIMATE candidates for mayor of Rochester.

The first is Rochester City Council President, the Honorable Lovely A. Warren, Esquire.

Lovely won the Democratic Primary in September fair and square, AND by a considerable margin, easily defeating the incumbent mayor.

The incumbent mayor has since ended his campaign and openly expressed his support of Lovely Warren’s candidacy.

Lovely is the only LEGITIMATE Democratic candidate for mayor.

The Green Party's Alex White: The second of the only two LEGITIMATE candidates for mayor of Rochester.

The Green Party’s Alex White is the second and last LEGITIMATE candidate for mayor.

Alex White is a small business owner and is prominent as a neighborhood activist, as well as being a perpetual thorn in the side of Rochester’s “rubber stamp” City Council, and a frequent “whistle blower” at some of the shadier dealings perpetrated by Citygov.

As I have frequently stated, and will continue to state, Lovely and Alex are the only two LEGITMATE candidates for mayor of Rochester.

The polls are open from 6 AM to 9 PM tomorrow, so there is no excuse NOT to vote, except for laziness or apathy.

If you are registered to vote, and are unsure of your polling place, you may contact the Monroe County Board of Elections for that information.

The extremely brief shooting star political career of Rochester’s ex-police chief and mayor, Bob Duffy, seems to be fading into a rather inglorious close.

According to the D&C’s Joseph Spector today, Governor Andrew Cuomo refused to discuss Duffy’s place as lieutenant governor on his 2014 re-election ticket.

Duffy, in August of this year, stated “The governor and I have the same plans. We plan to seek re-election and will formally announce it at the appropriate time.”

Odd that Cuomo won’t discuss it now.

This comes after months of speculation that Duffy would not run again for lieutenant governor in 2014, and that he would take over the Rochester Business Alliance from his dear old friend, Sandy Parker, when she retires next year.

This also comes after months of scandal resulting from Duffy purchasing Parker’s cottage on Keuka Lake for $527 grand, done in such a way to avoid brokerage fees.

And this is on top of Duffy’s readily apparent political impotence and lack of real influence during Lovely Warren’s campaign for mayor of Rochester this year.

Flashback to 2005: Rochester’s mayoral election.

The anti-David Gantt wing of the Rochester Democrats ran Duffy as a foil against David Gantt’s candidate, Wade Norwood.

Duffy substituted his height, good looks, charm and vague political rhetoric for any serious program to improve Rochester.

Duffy won, and promptly cleaned out City Hall, substituting his own inept and incompetent creatures there, who have been making a mess of Rochester ever since.

Admittedly, and ashamedly, I was one of his cheerleaders at that time. It took two years for the brainwashing to wear off and discover that Duffy didn’t walk on water.

Duffy did get rid of the Fast Ferry, which was an expensive albatross around Rochester’s neck. That was his only clear accomplishment.

He also instituted “Clean Sweep” as an exercise of his own ego: “I can get thousands of people to willingly and happily come out and do what their taxes already pay to have done.”

The crowds for that event get smaller every year, proving that you can only fool all of the people some of the time.

Duffy ran unopposed in the 2009 mayoral election, except for write-in candidate Tony Micciche, who eventually went on to become the County Legislator for the 26th district.

But not too much should be drawn from running unopposed.

Ex-mayor Bill Johnson ran for mayor unopposed in 2001. Maggie Brooks ran for re-election to the County Executive’s office more or less unopposed in 2007.

However, Duffy’s running unopposed in 2009 did interest Andrew Cuomo when he was shopping around for a lieutenant governor for the 2010 gubernatorial race.

On April 30, 2010, when questioned by D&C editor James Lawrence as to why he was so concerned about mayoral control of Rochester’s schools when he might not even remain here, Duffy replied “I am not going anywhere.”

Three weeks later, Duffy announced that he would run as Cuomo’s second banana in the gubernatorial race.

That was probably Bob Duffy’s political zenith.

In the fall of 2010, before his departure, Duffy propped up Tom Richards on the mayoral throne as his proxy.

Unfortunately, Duffy’s political influence in Rochester began to quickly slip away: Richards had opposition in the “special election,” and won with less than 50% of the vote, barely a few weeks after Duffy left.

Worse yet was in store.

Duffy as mayor accomplished little that was of benefit to Rochester. Duffy as lieutenant governor accomplished nothing beneficial for Western New York in general, or Rochester in particular.

The year 2013 revealed that Duffy was devoid of any political influence in Rochester, and next to none in Albany.

An Albany newspaper ran a story about the 100 most influenctial people ( politicians ) in the state capital. Duffy came in at 100, dead last.

Worse was yet to come.

Duffy could not get Lovely Warren to back down from her campaign for mayor against his chosen proxy. Lovely Warren was not afraid of Bob Duffy!

Duffy continued to throw his full support behind his proxy, Tom Richards, who promptly lost the Democratic Primary Election to Lovely Warren by a considerable margin. It meant that the Duffy/Richards administration would come to an end on December 31, 2013.

And it left Duffy looking shabby and deflated, without any real political importance in the city that was once his.

This, in conjunction with his moving out of Rochester, the purchase of Sandy Parker’s expensive Keuka Lake cottage, and rumor that he would leave the lieutenant governorship to lead the RBA would be good inducements for Governor Cuomo NOT to include Duffy in his team in 2014 to seek re-election.

It is probably clear to Cuomo that, where Duffy is concerned, the emperor is naked.

Hence, the lack of discussion about Duffy’s place on Cuomo’s ticket in 2014.

One needn’t feel too bad about Bob Duffy. He will be triple dipping on pensions. Duffy will be able to laugh all the way to the bank. He has lots of economic allies that can help him out in the future, if he runs through his stash of cash. Like Sandy Parker’s husband, who did so nicely purchasing city property cheaply while Duffy was mayor, and devloping it at enormous profit to himself. And his political career is, after all, only eight years in length. Hardly a huge stretch of time.

It has been no secret that I have been a Lovely supporter from the start. I have always felt that the Duffy/Richards administration has failed most of Rochester, and that it was time to put a stop to it.

When I embraced Lovely tonight in congratulation and said “You won,” she promptly corrected me and said “No, Andreas, WE won!”

Lovely always said that her unpaid volunteers were the backbone of her campaign and worth their weight in gold.

“Our” victory was no mean feat.

Lovely’s campaign was pitifully under-capitalized from the start. Moreover, she did not have the support of what William Gladstone would have referred to as the “traditionary influences” in politics: the wealthy elite and the Democratic Party’s powerbrokers. Neither did she have the support of the Labor Unions or that of the self-appointed representatives of the gay community.

Lovely DID have the support of those voters who felt disenfranchised and dispossessed by Citygov and the Duffy/Richards administration, despite the recent findings of the Siena Polls. Obviously their margin for error was more than the 4% they claimed.

Almost three years ago, after Tom Richards hastily converted to the Democratic Party for the sole purpose of being appointed deputy mayor thirty seconds later, he demanded a “special election” so as NOT to undergo a Democratic Primary Election.

Richards won the “special election” with less than 50% of the vote, running against the already discredited ex-mayor Bill Johnson and the Green Party’s Alex White.

Richards was simply not that popular. How could he have been? Nobody really knew anything about him. And most people considered the “special election” to be a sham, anyhow!

Which is why ex-mayor Duffy did not want Lovely to run this year. Duffy knew that Lovely could win, and despite the fevered attempts of the various Democratic committees to create a “cult of personality” about Tom Richards, that Tom Richards might very well lose a Democratic Primary Election.

That fear was realized tonight: Tom Richards took only 41% of the vote, and Duffy’s influence in Rochester politics was seen to have declined.

Lovely now has the Democratic line for the mayoral race in the General Election.

Ordinarily, one would say that Lovely has already won the mayoral race, since Rochester IS a Democratic one-party town.

Unfortunately, despite his crushing defeat tonight by Lovely, Tom Richards STILL has a few tricks up his sleeve: Richards still has the Independence and Working Families lines in November’s General Election. He could very well still run for mayor on those lines.

Looking angry and sounding bitter in an interview with YNN’s Seth Voorhees, Richards said that he has “a lot to think about in the next few days.”

Obviously, he hasn’t yet conceded the mayoral throne to Lovely or taken the hint over his poor showing at the polls that he isn’t the politician his public relations people and campaign handlers have made him out to be.

What will be very illuminating about the sincerity of his conversion to the Democratic Party will be if he runs as an Independent against the candidate chosen by his party of adoption!

What is certain is that Lovely won the Democratic line for the November election fair and square. Had she not, Lovely would have been forced to retire from the race.

The Presbyterian Home on Thurston Road in the 19th Ward played host to the first debate between the three candidates in this year’s election for mayor.

They are Green Party candidate Alex White, a local entrepreneur, activist and opponent of the failed policies of Citygov; the Honorable Lovely A. Warren, Esquire, City Council President and representative of the Northeast District; and Tom Richards, the current incumbent and Bob Duffy’s relict on Rochester’s mayoral throne.

It was an exciting evening as far as such political debates go: a brilliant antithesis between the new, as represented by Alex and Lovely, and the old, as represented by Richards, bent on claiming success for continuing the failed policies of Rochester’s past.

To do Richards some justice, he has been saddled with Duffy’s administration to a man. With such advisors acting as his administrators, how could he act otherwise?

Of course, it obviously never dawned on Richards to stack the deck with his own people, which suggests that he originally never planned to run for re-election.

When Richards concluded the evening by stating that he was just an “old, white man,” he said a lot more than he probably intended.

The debate, facilitated by YNN news reporter Sheba Clark, was conducted in the standard fashion: 3 minutes worth of opening statements by each candidate; questions, answers and rebuttals by the candidates; and finally, the candidates’ closing statements.

What was apparent very early in the piece is that Richards was clearly on the defensive.

Alex, as a small businessman, complained about the number of regulations that inhibit smaller investors from locating into our city. Richards stated that Alex wanted to eliminate all regulations, which was NOT what Alex had said.

Lovely stated that she wished to create a Rochester-based IDA as a counterpoise to COMIDA, so that Rochesterians would get a bite of the development apple. Richards claimed that Rochesterians were already getting their bite. Lovely retorted that “local” in COMIDA terms meant the nine-county area, not specifically Rochester.

Richards claimed that the city had dumped a lot of money ( $1.9 BILLION ) into the neighborhoods. “Dumped” is the operative word. There has been neither foresight nor follow-through to otherwise stabilize and further upgrade neighborhoods. Alex pointed out that such dumping was wasteful, and continued to leave vacant properties in blighted areas. Lovely correctly pointed out that such subsidized housing developments end up concentrating poverty in the poorer areas of town. Her district, the Northeast, is the poorest quadrant in Rochester. Both Lovely and Alex had solutions to this problem: mixed-housing and homesteading, respectively. And more support for neighborhood associations, to better empower them to improve their own neighborhoods.

Richards unhelpfully replied that such funding has largely dried up.

The subject of crime in the neighborhoods was brought up in a question from one of the residents of the Presbyterian Home. Apparently, they were told Thurston Road is NOT safe to go out on!

Alex claimed more police presence was necessary, and that the streets and stores belonged to the neighborhoods. By venturing out there, we would start to take them back. Lovely mentioned the increasing amounts of crime on Chili Avenue, and that she begged for more police presence there, at least a police trailer if not a precinct house. Richards claimed that he had more police in the area, and rather unconvincingly added that action solved the problem of crime on Chili Avenue.

Both Alex and Lovely made it quite clear that neighborhood policing was necessary, far more necessary than a part-time police precinct downtown.

As for crime among youth, Lovely stressed education in a city where the school system has failed the vast majority of our children. Alex stressed recreation centers, extended library hours and youth activities to give them something to do, other than hanging around street corners. Both are necessary.

Even more telling was the question about Rochester’s finances: Alex quoted the city’s debt. Richards claimed that Alex’s figures were both wrong and untrue. Alex promptly replied that those figures came from the city’s own website, leaving Richards looking shabby and deflated.

This is just a sampling of what occurred this evening, a preview of other mayoral debates to come!

What IS true enough is that none of the three candidates HAVE to run, but that they WANT to run! Lovely herself firmly reiterated that remark when Richards made it.

But Richards didn’t seem nearly as passionate about it as did Alex and Lovely. Perhaps it’s hard to justify actions that have benefitted very few people in Rochester in the wake of our notoriously high crime rate, disgraceful child poverty rate and infant mortality rate.

In fact, Rochester sank to 11th in the entire nation for child poverty with Duffy at the helm. We continued to sink to 7th in the nation with Richards in his place.

An out-of-town campaign manager from Albany with a $200,000 price tag attached can’t gloss over those ugly facts, or that something is seriously wrong with the Duffy/Richards administration.

Alex has long been experienced speaking before large audiences, and his ideas make good sense, if a little more extreme than what Rochester is accustomed to. But only because they haven’t been tried yet. And Alex always appears to know what he is talking about. He was unfazed by the questions or the rebuttals this evening.

Lovely appears increasingly comfortable before large groups. Her ideas can be described as “moderate,” yet also making good sense. But education is her rallying cry, even if the school system is NOT within the purview of the mayor’s office.

Tonight, Lovely appeared both feminine and firm. Passionate but restrained. She is certainly NOT a “little girl,” willing to be told to wait her turn, but has become a lady of some considerable political sophistication!

Rochester's incumbent mayor, Tom Richards: Endorsed by the teachers' union because he will not interfere with the worst school system in New York State!

Nobody expected Rochester’s incumbent mayor, Tom Richards, NOT to get the endorsement of the local labor unions.

It made good sense; it was extremely logical.

Developers contributed heavily to Richards’ re-election campaign. Richards promptly proposes legislation allowing the developers to do their projects. The City Council promptly rubber stamps Richards’ proposed legislation. The trades unions promptly get contracts to build these projects.

And so the vicious cycle continues, because there are a good many projects, in order to keep that campaign cash flowin’.

Everyone ends up scratching everyone else’s back!

It was the teachers’ union endorsing Richards that seemed a bit strange…at least at first glance.

The Mayor of Rochester has no say in the affairs of the Rochester City School District or the School Board. Unless, of course, the mayor intends to support mayoral control of the schools, which has now become a dead letter in Rochester.

Or the mayor calls for more charter schools, as mayoral candidate the Honorable Lovely A. Warren, Esquire, President of Rochester City Council has done.

Charter schools are public schools, but beyond the control of the School Board and the teachers’ union, which is why both of them resist it.

As Richards has indicated no interest in changing anything about the Rochester City School District, the endorsement from the teachers’ union can be seen for what it is: a reward ( or bribe ) to keep Richards’ nose out of their business.

Such an endorsement has no other purpose.

It is even more telling when one considers the statements made by two guests of honor at the Charlotte Community Association’s monthly meeting last night. Mr. Malik Evans, president of Rochester’s School Board ( at $30 grand a year for one of the best-paying part-time jobs in the city ) and Dr. Bolgen Vargas, Rochester’s Superintendent of Schools ( at about a quarter of a million a year ).

They were expecting a pleasant walk on the beach last night, but immediately went on the defensive when asked about Rochester’s status as the worst school district in New York State and the dismal graduation rates for black and Hispanic males.

Both men claimed that such statements were incorrect; that the data used to arrive at such conclusions was flawed; that there are many places, even in the suburbs, that are worse than the Rochester City School District.

Even more unimpressive was the claim that the low graduation figures were the result of doing away with local diplomas and concentrating purely on Regents diplomas.

Many, if not all, suburban school districts did away with local diplomas decades ago.

And while there are still some “good” schools in Rochester, successful programs have not been introduced across the board in all of the city schools.

Dr. Vargas was correct in one thing: technology has changed since he was a child. But the Rochester City School district has failed to account for this change, and has been failing to do so for decades.

Mr. Evans and Dr. Vargas were also unimpressed by charter schools, for the obvious reason that neither of them cut any ice there.

And, just as an aside, according to New York State Law, Dr. Vargas is NOT qualified to be a School Superintendent. He was granted a waiver for such requirements when he was hired by the School Board to be Superintendent.

Which does a lot to explain the mess that Rochester’s schools are in.

However, we were told that things are not as bad as they really are in our school system. And that they need more help from the community.

Perhaps they have forgotten that there are various literacy groups in Rochester that are attempting to do just that. Perhaps they have forgotten that there are programs in our public library system designed with that purpose in mind. Perhaps they have forgotten the Rotary Club’s literacy committee?

And the teachers’ union endorsed Richards for the express reason that he will not interfere in the Rochester City School District!

Today, City Council President the Honorable Lovely A. Warren, Esquire submitted her petitions to the Monroe County Board of Elections.

Ms. Warren broke a record by filing 6,240 petitions for her candidacy for Mayor of Rochester.

It was the largest number of petitions ever filed for a purely city race. And almost twice as many as her opponent, the incumbent mayor of Rochester.

When interviewed by the media immediately following her filing the petitions, Ms. Warren added her opinions as to why this was so.

First, that a significant number of Rochesterians want change in our fair city.

Secondly, that all of the signatures on the petitions were gotten by local volunteers, not paid canvassers from out of the area. That includes her campaign managers.

Ms. Warren needed only 1,000 signatures to qualify.

When asked why she went on to acquire so many more, six times as many as needed, Ms. Warren stated it was done to show that ALL of Rochester was important. That all four quadrants were canvassed by volunteers.

And, let’s face it, it has been a hot, wet and sticky summer so far! To get 6,240 petitions was a sign of real support from her unpaid volunteers!

This explains why there are three campaign headquarters in Rochester: on Waring Road, on West Main Street and on Dewey Avenue in the Maplewood Neighborhood. Three ARE needed!

To sum up: Lovely Warren made history today!

She hopes to continue making history by becoming the first female mayor of Rochester.

Recent murders and shootings have proved that the eight years of the Duffy-Richards administration has NOT changed the perception that Rochester is a dangerous city!

It has been an unusually rainy June for Rochester.

While it has been good for the flowers, it has been making my grass grow way too damned fast, necessitating more frequent mowing, when the rain lets up.

But, it is business as usual in our fair city for other events.

Sort of.

Just past midnight, in the early hours of Monday, June 24, a double homicide occurred.

They were Rochester’s 14th and 15th homicides for the year 2013.

Occurring outside of a club on Central Avenue, it got a little bit of news coverage for the day. But only just a little.

That was because it occurred where Rochester’s crimes, violence and murder are supposed to happen: the Fatal Crescent.

The Fatal Crescent is that swathe of poverty that rings the Inner Loop, curving into the Bulls Head neighborhood.

A less than “politically correct” way to describe the Fatal Crescent is the ghetto.

Thursday, there was a shoot out between the police and the chief suspect in those murders, a rapper known as “Irak da Prince.”

This has been receiving a lot of news coverage. A police officer was wounded. The suspect is in guarded condition at the hospital. An innocent bystander is also in guarded condition at the hospital.

The shoot out did NOT occur where such incidents are supposed to happen. It occurred in a relatively neat and safe neighborhood on Rochester’s Northeast side, bordering on the Town of Irondequoit.

The innocent bystander was from the Town of Henrietta.

And early this morning, yet another man was shot on a porch on Coleman Terrace on the East Side…where such incidents are supposed to occur.

Despite press conferences where Rochester Police Chief Sheppard occasionally cracked a smile describing the improving condition of the wounded police officer, and the current mayor’s tight lipped statement that the shoot out ”had to be done,” neither man bothered to mention the innocent bystander who was injured and in guarded condition at Strong Memorial Hospital.

Probably because this incident is an embarrassment to both of them.

Despite their claims to the contrary, eight years of the Duffy-Richards administration has NOT changed the perception that Rochester is a dangerous city to be in. The fact that a suburban resident was caught in the cross-fire between the police and the suspect merely underscores this perception. Which is why many suburbanites fear visiting our city, which is why so many residents continue to flee Rochester for what they perceive are the “safer” suburbs.

The disgusting performance of our school system also provides many residents an excellent reason to move to the “better” suburban schools, but that is a different story.

What is clear is that there are no really “safe” neighborhoods in Rochester anymore, despite the pious cant offered by Citygov. And, despite the police chief’s claim that most of our crimes ( and murders ) are “gang related,” lately there have been a lot of innocent bystanders injured during the course of these events.

And the news media has a field day when these incidents occur in places where they are not supposed to.

Those of us who live in Rochester, in “neighborhoods in transition,” know who the criminals are. We report them to the appropriate officials regularly, only to see them roam the streets at will, because we are told there is little that the police can do about them. We are told not to put ourselves at risk by exposing ourselves to danger.

Which means that we are to live with a “siege mentality,” and turn our homes into fortresses, and venture out only to purchase food and go to work.

That’s bad enough.

What is worse are the families and friends of these criminals who protect them, who allow them hang around their stores and businesses, who cover for them while these thugs commit their crimes and drive more people away from their businesses.

Perhaps they don’t understand “cause and effect.”

Whether that is a result of fear of retribution, misplaced family affection or the disgusting “Don’t Snitch” code of thug culture is anyone’s guess.

Many of Rochester’s residents DO fight the good fight, wringing their hands and saying “This can’t continue” when given glib excuses as to why nothing can be done.

So it will continue, at least until people realize that it is in their best interest to rid our streets of such trash.

Or until they throw in the towel and move out of Rochester.

Which is what the thugs want: to be allowed to practice their trade unimpeded by people who want to clean up Rochester.

To prevent that, we need to continue to complain to the police about these thugs who roam our streets, no matter how hopeless it may sometimes seem.

We also need to have leaders in office who will bite the bullet and come down hard on criminals, putting their political careers on the line to do so.

Tom Richards: After eight years of the Duffy/Richards Administration, Rochester cannot afford to host the 2024 Olympics!

On Wednesday, February 20, Rochester’s current mayor announced that our city had been chosen to vie for the privilege of hosting the 2024 Olympics!

That is quite an honor!

And visions of sugarplums should have been dancing in our heads.

For a few weeks in 2024, global focus would be centered on Rochester. This would have been a shot in the arm for our pride and our local economy.

Then, BAM!

Reality kicked in.

Tom Richards announced that Rochester couldn’t afford it. Rochester has neither the facilities nor the money necessary to undertake such a prestigious task.

That’s true enough…for now.

But what about in four years? Or eight years? Or ten years?

Could Rochester be made ready by then?

Flashback: the mayoral election of 2005.

Bob Duffy’s cheerleaders claimed that he was the only candidate who could “turn Rochester around”

Admittedly, and ashamedly, I was one of those cheerleaders.

As mayor, Duffy substituted his good looks, height and personal charm for any policy with long term goals to improve Rochester. Duffy did provide Rochester with a modus vivendi to muddle through crisis after crisis, offering no real solutions to the problems that continued to plague our city. A practiced smile is not cure for anything.

Duffy’s only major accomplishment came early in the piece: he rid Rochester of that expensive albatross around our necks, the Fast Ferry.

In 2010, before Duffy high-tailed it out of Rochester to become Governor Cuomo’s second banana, he appointed Tom Richards as Deputy Mayor. It was Duffy’s intent that Richards act as his proxy on Rochester’s mayoral throne.

Richards, in return, kept Duffy’s administration virtually intact. This accounts for the fact that, despite Citygov’s attempts to create a “cult of personality” about Richards, Richards’ administration lacks any distinctive coloring or unique character of its own. It might just as well be referred to as the “Duffy/Richards Administration.”

Unfortunately for Duffy, the “special election” for mayor in 2011 was an embarrassment: his proxy won with far less than 50% of the vote. Richards was nearly beaten by ex-mayor Bill Johnson, whose twelve year regime was a disaster for Rochester.

The majority of voters didn’t want Richards.

Duffy realized this. The only way Richards could win an absolute majority in a mayoral election is if he were the only candidate running. Which is why Duffy leaned so hard on City Council President Lovely A. Warren to withdraw from running for mayor this year. Lovely has an impressive political base of support of her own, and she is not tainted by the failures of the Johnson regime.

Lovely could win! And if she did, she could use the precedent set by none other than Duffy himself: to clean house and purge her administration of Duffy’s political appointees.

Duffy, Richards and Citygov want to avoid that at all cost.

But the possibility of Lovely running for mayor is NOT a “travesty:” Duffy’s attempt to strong arm her into withdrawing IS!

Fast forward to the present.

Tom Richards announced that we couldn’t afford to play host to the 2024 Olympics.

Rochester is not ready now, and Rochester, under the continuation of the Duffy/Richards administration wouldn’t be ready then, either.

In fact, eight years of the Duffy/Richards Administration has NOT turned Rochester around.

Rochester ranks seventh in the nation for child poverty. Rochester ( Monroe County ) ranks first in New York State for infant mortality. Rochester has, arguably, the worst public school system in the state. Rochester is perceived as a dangerous place, the “Murder Capital of New York State!”

In fact, the highest number of murders in Rochester took place when Duffy was the city’s police chief.

And our poorest neighborhoods are being ignored and continue disintegrating, the Josana Plan be damned. Citygov is more interested in building more expensive and grandiose monuments to itself with money we don’t have!

Richards himself has been forced to admit that Rochester’s eroding tax base can no longer sustain the cost of administering the city. That’s true enough.

According to Alex White, the Green Party’s candidate for mayor this year, there are thousands of abandoned houses in Rochester that are effectively off of the tax rolls. Nor are the remaining properties in the city being taxed fairly. Some are taxed at their fully assessed value; some are allowed to pay far less than that. And devil’s bargains with entities like the Wilmorite and Winn Companies resulted in payments in lieu of taxes, which again pay far less than their properties’ assessed values.

Yesterday’s article by the D&C’s Joe Spector states that there is little benefit to the cities of New York State to raise property taxes to the legal limit. The costs to administer the cities still wouldn’t come close to being covered by that action. The article points out that Buffalo, New York State’s second largest city, is already under the state’s financial control, and that 50% of Syracuse’s property is exempt from paying property tax.

Interesting, but not news. Our local governments have known about this for quite some time, but preferred to muddle on from crisis to crisis rather than plan for the future, expecting someone else to fix it!

Where does that leave us?

Well, Tom Richards is running for mayor in a real election this year. Basing it on what? What can Richards offer us for the next four years, except more of the same…which has been none too good.

Eight years of the Duffy/Richards Administration hasn’t “turned things around.” Four more years of it won’t do it, either.

Despite Citygov’s claims that Rochester is “poised for greatness” or that Rochester’s “time has come,” that is merely rhetoric from people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo ( i.e., their high-paying positions within it or connections to it ).

That we can’t afford to host the 2024 Olympics is true enough, largely because the Duffy/Richards Administration has ignored and continues to ignore the root problems that plague our city. It continues to offer a modus vivendi rather than long term programs with serious solutions.

And continuing the Duffy/Richards Administration won’t bring any marked improvements to Rochester.

The Sibley Building: Despite the tortured last minute antics of the Winn Company and the devil's bargain they made with Citygov, MCC will probably move away from it after the expiration of their lease.

The Boston-based Winn Company, which recently purchased the Sibley Building downtown, is worried that Monroe Community College might actually move its downtown campus to a location on State Street, currently owned by the dying Kodak Empire.

MCC is currently the only tenant in the Sibley Building.

What took the Winn Company so long to get worried about it?

MCC has been complaining for years that the Sibley Building is “unsuitable” for MCC’s purposes. MCC has been looking for other locations long before the Winn company bought the Sibley Building. And MCC is squarely under the thumb of the Republican controlled Monroe County Legislature.

While it is the fondest wish of the mayor who now is and Rochester’s Democratically monopolized Citygov to keep MCC’s downtown campus at its current location in the Sibley Building, and make it a focal point of the Potemkin Village they hope to create in its environs, the county Republicans have no wish to pull the mayor’s chestnuts out of the fire for him. The county Republicans have been pursuing the possibility of relocating MCC’s downtown campus to the State Street location for over a year. Tant pis to the mayor’s plans.

It almost seems that Karma has caught up with the devil’s deal the mayor made with the Winn Company. The Wynn Company was not required to give Rochester’s taxpayers any assurances that they would indeed do what they said they would to redevelop the Sibley Building. The mayor, on the other hand, never really informed the Winn Company of the disastrous political partisanship that exists between the Democrats and Republican in this area. Nor is it probable that the mayor informed the Winn Company that he was not competent to deal with the subject of MCC in the first place.

It resembles as case of a Gypsy and a hustler picking each others’ pockets!

So, now the Winn Company desperately wants to keep its only tenant in the Sibley Building, claiming that by staying there, MCC would be saving the taxpayers $18 million in construction costs. The Winn company has also knocked an additional $10 million off of what they claimed would be the cost of renovating the Sibley Building.

Odd, that.

This comes at the 11th hour.

On Tuesday, February 12, the Republican controlled Monroe County Legislature will vote to purchase a parcel of Kodak’s State Street property. It will probably succeed, and in three years’ time, the Winn Company will lose its only tenant in the Sibley Building.

As for the minority Democrats sitting in the County Legislature, they can hardly claim that this will be a surprise. The legislation passed the County Legislature’s Ways and Means Committee last week with a 9 – 1 vote. It has been described by the D&C as “bipartisan.” Also, according to the D&C: “A month earlier, a bonding resolution to finance a new downtown campus won bipartisan approval in the County Legislature, but only after the Republican majority appeased Democrats by removing references to specific locations.”

Were the Democrats in the County Legislature really gulled by this sleight of hand involving the bonding resolution, or did they enter into this with their eyes wide shut, knowing full well the Republican majority would ultimately move MCC’s downtown campus to the State Street site? And can such an action be referred to as being truly “bipartisan?”

This has not exactly been the Democrats’ “finest hour.” They must have known what was going to happen, but it would have been better to have been shot for sheep as for lambs.

As for the Republican majority, well, they haven’t been upfront with us either. The D&C has reported that they claim the new MCC downtown campus will cost $72 million to complete, while others say $75 million.

In March of 2012, Republican Anthony James Micciche, County Legislator for the 26th district, was delighted to tell the Rochester Republican Committee that moving the MCC campus to State Street would “save” $10 million. At that time, Micciche didn’t say when, how or why.

Six months later, after the Charlotte Community Association’s monthly meeting, Micciche rather unconvincingly claimed that the $10 million savings would be in “operational costs.”

Last night ( February 6 ) at the Maplewood Neighborhood Association’s monthly meeting, Micciche was asked if he favored moving MCC’s downtown campus or keeping it where it is. Micciche, famous for his tap dancing routine, claimed that he was “non-committal” on the subject. This was odd, given his previous statements in support of MCC moving to State Street and how undertaking such a step would result in “saving” the taxpayers money.

But, then again, Micciche made those statements at different locations, geared towards different audiences.

And nobody, Democrat or Republican, has ever bothered to explain why a downtown campus for MCC is a necessity!

Sure, some people want a satellite campus downtown. For some people, it is a matter of convenience.

Personally, I would like rain to be beer. But that is not a necessity, either.

So, the Winn Company owns the Sibley Building. It will be making ridiculously small payments to the city in lieu of taxes. The Winn company will be losing its only tenant, MCC, which will be moving to a new location on State Street after its lease expires. The Republican controlled County Legislature will be voting to approve purchasing the State Street cite on Tuesday, which will undoubtedly pass because the Democrats have placed themselves between a rock and a hard place. The Democrats? Well, if they oppose it, the Republicans will say that they oppose improving the quality of education in Rochester. If the Democrats approve it, no matter how grudgingly, the mayor ends up with egg on his face, and a focal point for “downtown revitalization” goes up in smoke.

This is the “bipartisanship” County Executive Maggie Brooks forever keeps yammering about.

The Winn company certainly didn’t know what it was getting into when it bought the Sibley Building!

Rochester’s first murder of 2013 took place yesterday, January 14. It was a shooting.

Given Rochester’s lamentable but much deserved reputation as the “murder capital” of New York State, undoubtedly it will not be the last one.

It took place on Roycroft Drive, part of that swathe of Rochester sardonically referred to as “The Fatal Crescent.” That is the neighborhood in which I grew up.

What is particularly galling to me is that my father’s parents lived on Roycroft Drive when they came to America as refugees from war-torn Eastern Europe more than sixty years ago.

Rochester is seen as a dangerous place in which to live, with some neighborhoods more deadly than others.

No amount of spin control offered by the public relations “experts” in Citygov is changing that fact. None of the effusive praise recently offered to Rochester’s mayor or its chief of police seems to be quite sincere. A recent petition to remove the chief of police from his office was ignored by Citygov. Nor is the police chief’s frequent claims that most of Rochester’s violence is “gang related” particularly reassuring.

Yes, people are angry about Rochester’s reputation, but are they angry enough?

Conservatives, in the wake of recent shooting sprees in Newtown, Connecticut and Webster, New York, are more fearful of stricter gun control laws being enacted that they feel will infringe upon their constitutional right to bear and carry arms. They are aware that those spectacular killings were the result of legal weapons that were obtained by people who were not authorized to possess them.

Conservatives also wish for harsher penalties to be meted out to convicted criminals. This means longer periods of incarceration. Yet they are unwilling to fund the building and staffing of more prisons.

Liberals, on the other hand, feel that Rochester’s high crime rate is the result of poverty and ignorance. That’s true enough. Liberals also feel that until those issues are redressed, Rochester’s high crime rate will continue. That, too, is true enough. But what about the majority of us who do not engage in criminal activities? Are we simply to endure living with shootings, youth gangs, street prostitution and open air drug markets until that day comes, if ever?

As for the court system, it seems logjammed and ”politically correct” to the point of immobility. The courts must frequently use “plea bargaining” ( i.e., allowing criminals to plead guilty to a lesser offense with less severe penalties ) in order to get criminals off of the streets…but only temporarily. If not an example of justice, it certainly resembles a case of “Let’s Make A Deal.” Nobody is happy with this, but it allows the courts to close the books on most of our crimes.

Police Chief James Sheppard: His impish grin and pat phrases are no real solution to Rochester's reputation as a violent city.

Tonight, Citygov is hosting one in a series of “Voice of the Citizens” meetings at 500 Carter Street ( the Carter Street Recreation Center ) from 6 PM to 8 PM.

The location is ironic; it is a quarter mile away from where Rochester’s latest murder took place!

Rochester’s mayor and chief of police, as well as other Citygov staff will be there asking for our input to reduce violence in our neighborhoods.

A handout proffered by the Rochester Police Department states that we, the city’s residents, ”are an invaluable component of this process as we work together to discuss solutions to improve our community.”

The handout also lists the discussion topics as being open air drug sales and gate houses; bullying and truancy; gangs, guns and the culture of violence; house parties. Most neighborhood associations have complained about these topics before.

Similar meetings will be held on Tuesday, January 29 at the Edgerton Stardust Ballroom at 41 Backus Street; and on Tuesday, February 5 at Cobbs Hill Park at Lake Riley Lodge, 100 Norris Drive.

This IS an election year for the City of Rochester. It is important that residents attend these meetings and start demanding answers from the mayor and the chief of police, since these questions are NOT new. They have simply never been adequately addressed. Nor will they ever be addressed until we, the people, remind them that they can be removed from office and be replaced by officials who will make the hard choices where crime is concerned.

Chief of Police James Sheppard’s famously impish grin and pat phrase about “bodies dropping” is simply not enough. It never has been.

That is, of course, if we, the people, are truly angry enough with them to see it through.

Contributors

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Rich Gardner has been writing about the history, culture and waterways of Upstate New York for years. His articles have appeared in U.S. and Canadian publications, and one book, Learning to Walk. He is an alumnus of Brighton High School and SUNY Geneseo. He operates Upstate Resume & Writing Service in Brighton and recently moved to Corn Hill, where he is already involved in community projects. "I enjoy the 'Aha!' moments of learning new things, conceptual and literal. City living is a great teacher."

Ken Warner grew up in Brockport and first experienced Rochester as a messenger boy for a law firm in Midtown Tower. He recently moved downtown into a loft on the 13th floor of the Temple Building with a view of the Liberty Poll and works in the Powers Building overlooking Rochester’s four corners as Executive Director for UNICON, an organization devoted to bringing economic development to the community. He hopes to use his Rochester Blog to share his observations from these unique views of downtown.